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The St. Lawrence Acoustic Stage opens its season Saturday with a special concert featuring Lemon Bucket Orkestra.

“Lemon Bucket Orkestra is described as Canada’s only balkan-klezmer-gypsy-party-punk-super-band,” said Sandra Whitworth, member of SLAS board. “The Vancouver Weekly calls them a high energy Guerrilla-folk super band.”

Mark Marczyk, member of the band, said the band has been around for about eight years with kind of a rolling membership.

“There is a few of us that are still the original members, but we started as kind of a big community collective,” said Marczyk.

The band has toured with as many as 17 members and has played with as few as two. He figured about 30 musicians have been attached to the band since its inception.

“It’s almost a rite of passage in Toronto to play with Lemon Bucket,” he said.

Marczyk said the band was a mix of Eastern European folk music and everything else the people in the band are interested in.

“The main thrust of it came from Eastern European folk culture,” he said.

Marczyk said a few of the band members are from the Ukraine, including himself and his wife.

“Most of the repertoire, before we evolved and became a professional group, came from our travels through Eastern Europe,” he said. “There is something about the culture and celebration that is an inherent part of Eastern European folklore we were really attracted to and wanted to share with people in Toronto where we were living. So we started to explore that and really pay attention to the nuances of the tradition.

“But of course, all of us have our own background. We had people who are classically trained, we had one guy who was a punk drummer, we had a guy who played in a samba and we had somebody who was a belly dancer. We just had a variety of people who brought different influences in.”

Marczyk said rather than fighting them, the band tried to find a home for them in the music it played.

“That gave birth to this newly energized folklore,” he said.

Marczyk said the band thought of its show as an experience, rather than just a performance.

“We try and create that feeling you feel when you go to a wedding or a festival,” he said. “There is a certain feeling of something is going to happen and I’m going to be a part of it. So rather than presenting a show that is finished and polished and you come and enjoy, you sort of love the virtuosity and the performance, we try to show you a little bit of Eastern European culture but welcome you to be a part of it.”

Marczyk said they have not played at SLAS yet but are really looking forward to coming to Morrisburg.

“It’s always exciting when you get to a new space and one of our favourite things to do is to get to a space early and look at what it is and scheme about how we can make it special,” he said. “Make people think about the space in a different way. Experience it in a way that they never have before.”

The first concert of the SLAS season opens at 7 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 7. Tickets are $20 in advance and may still be available at Rurban Brewing, McIntosh Inn, Upper Canada Playhouse or from the website at www.st-lawrencestage.com.